Page 55 of Ragoru

Evie nodded and leaned forward to close the line to Dr. Farris, his sad smile the last thing she saw as he waved goodbye. The broadcasted hologram snapped off as she picked up the comm and turned it off completely, handing it over her shoulder to Thral.

“You know what to do,” she choked.

Her mate took it solemnly and slipped out from behind her. She turned her eyes away though she couldn’t mute the sound of his footsteps heading out of the house. He wouldn’t break it in front of her. He loved her and respected her connection to those she cared about and the causes she felt responsible for. Nothing could silence the loud crack of the comm breaking. A piece of her heart broke with it, but she held her tears in check as Sabol and Vrishna carried their youngest rogs away to tuck them into bed. Her eldest sons, Ehinor and Veris, gave her identical worried looks, but she hugged and kissed them before sending them off after their fathers. She didn’t allow herself to collapse until Thral returned and gathered her in his arms.

He curled himself around her completely, hugging her against his massive frame and still held tight to her when her other two mates joined them and tucked their bodies in close around so that she was surrounded by a wall of warm fur and love. Blinking back tears, she smiled. The future loomed ahead of them with all manner of frightening possibilities, but she had this. She had her family, and her mates would see to it that they all remained safe.

Dashing her tears away, she settled deep into their embrace, and when Sabol began to sing, the eerie cadence carried her beyond the problems of the future. She had now, and she would hold onto it with all of her strength every day. And she would continue her studies.

The world would someday be ready for it.

Someday.

That dream carriedon in her descendants. Her children and her grandchildren, teaching all those in their clan whom they could, preserving knowledge that they discovered. Generation upon generation they did this. They continued to be storytellers, historians and scribes for their clans when the clans began to divide and multiply as they expanded across the far northern lands until after generations, some began to move out from the clans to find the other Ragoru.

Although Korash was not the first Ragoru to leave the northern clans in the hundreds of years since his ancestors’ time, he was the first of his line to descend into the wilds since his ancestress, Evie, had journeyed north.

But he would not be the last. And with them, they would carry the seed of Evie’s hope for the future with them.